FPL Gameweek 5 Review: What Went Right And Wrong — 29 Sep
The call — GW5 Post-Mortem: The Week the Template Held the Line Antoine Semenyo's 17 points was the score of the week — and with roughly 1.5 in 10 of us owning him, most of us watched it happen from the outside. That stings. But before we panic-buy anything, let's look at what actually moved ranks in Gameweek 5, and what didn't.
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The average manager scored 48. Not a disaster, not a party. The top score hit 126, and the gap between those two numbers was built almost entirely on the low-owned stuff: Brobbey's 17 for Sunderland (about 1 in 10 own him), Dasilva's 15 for Coventry and Schuster's 14 for Brentford — both owned by practically nobody. If a rival had one of those, they flew past us. That's the nature of it. We can't own everything, and chasing last week's ghosts is how ranks die.
Here's the good news for the flock: the template did its job. Groß hauled 14 with nearly 3 in 10 of us on him. Tarkowski's 14 and Hall's 13 landed in plenty of squads too — between them, close to 2 in 10 each. Those scores didn't win us the week, but they stopped us bleeding. That's what owning what everyone owns is *for*. It's a strategy, not a failure.
The captaincy is where the week was genuinely lost. Nearly 7.5 in 10 of us handed Haaland the armband, and the best pick in hindsight was Semenyo. When three-quarters of the game captains the same player, a quiet week from him is survivable — everyone stands still together. That's exactly why we defend the crowd captain: the real damage only comes when you step off it and he goes big without you. Nobody who followed the crowd got hurt *relative to the field* this week. Remember that before you get clever.
So, the lesson. The temptation now is to chase Semenyo's haul or punt on a Brobbey. A word of warning first: one big week from a low-owned player is one big week. What actually separated the bands was variance, not insight — and variance cuts both ways.
The call: if you don't own Semenyo, he's the one move worth making before the deadline — 1.5 in 10 ownership means he still moves your rank if he keeps producing, and 17 points is a serious statement. Everything else — Groß, Tarkowski, Hall, the crowd captain — we protect. Hold the template, add Semenyo, and don't touch the armband. Safe first, clever second.